School counseling now and in the future: a reaction - response to Stan Baker and others, Professional School Counseling, vol. 5, p. 75, 84, 96, 106, December 2001

Professional School Counseling, Feb, 2002 by Susan Jones Sears, Darcy Haag Granello

Here, at the beginning of the 21st Century, the focus in the December 2001 issue of Professional School Counseling provided an opportunity for school counselors and counselor educators to stop and reflect on the status of the profession. The articles by Baker (2001) and Gysbers (2001) reminded us of how far the profession has come and how many people have influenced school counseling and worked tirelessly on its behalf. Nevertheless, all four articles reminded readers of how much work remains if school counseling is to meet the needs of all students in an increasingly diverse country.

Common Themes

While decidedly different in their focus and tone, the four articles on school counseling past, present, and future had several common themes, each appearing in at least three of the four articles. The themes that we identified focused primarily on the belief that school counselors (a) struggle with role definition, (b) face increasingly diverse student populations, (c) should serve all students, (d) need to utilize technology to improve their school counseling programs, and (e) must engage in ongoing professional development. Two final themes centered around the nature and impact of school counseling programs and visions of the future of school counseling.

We reflect on these articles as counselor educators at a large, Midwestern university, deeply invested in and involved in school counseling reform. It is from this perspective we first comment on and then give our perspectives regarding file common themes we noted in the four articles. Next, we present our own vision of the future of school counseling and school counselor preparation, which is vested heavily in the national initiative of The Education Trust (1997).

School Counselor Role

As hard as it is to believe, school counselors are still struggling with role definition. Paisley and McMahon (2001) argued that the ongoing debate over role definition is probably the most significant challenge facing school counselors. Although the current national focus is on counseling programs rather than counseling services, the authors noted that individual school counselors are still struggling with priorities. The national agenda for school counseling changes its focus as it reacts to national agendas and events, moving from an emphasis on at-risk students, to school violence, and more recently to academic achievement. As a result, school counselors are pulled in different directions. Baker (2001) also commented on the many and varied demands on school counselors, noting more than a dozen different student populations that have been identified in the literature as needing special assistance.

Gysbers (2001), although not addressing role definition as directly as the others, noted that there have been and continues to be a wide variety of purposes advanced for school counseling. He argued that these multiple purposes could result in unfulfilled expectations, role conflict for counselors as they try to respond to different demands, and fragmentation among the specialty as some school counselors respond to mental health concerns while others respond to career or educational issues. Gysbers argued it is rime for the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) to assume a leadership role in defining a clear purpose/mission for school counselors. Certainly ASCA's development of the National Standards for School Counseling Programs (Campbell & Dahir, 1997) is the kind of leadership to which he was referring.

Paisley and McMahon (2001) suggested that a "stable yet flexible" idea of school counseling actually does exist. They believe "school counseling programs are increasingly anchored in proactive interventions associated with comprehensive, developmental, and collaborative approaches" (p. 110). Additionally, they maintained counselors can define their role better by recognizing they cannot do their work alone and need to collaborate with other stakeholders. Additionally, Paisley and McMahon (2001) also pointed to the necessity of setting appropriate professional boundaries. Counselors need "their best human relations and assertiveness skills' (p. 111) to establish and maintain professional boundaries while limiting the number of noncounseling duties in which they engage.

We share the concerns the authors expressed about the role ambiguity of school counselors and believe that uncertainty regarding the role of school counselors is an important issue stemming from several circumstances. We believe part of the confusion results from the use of the term guidance to describe guidance counselors and guidance programs (Schmidt, 1999). The inconsistency in the use of terms to describe who school counselors are and what they do can only confuse principals, teachers, and parents. This same inconsistency in language was found in the four feature articles in Professional School Counseling. While Baker (2001), Green and Keys (2001), and Paisley and McMahon (2001) used the terms school counseling and developmental school counseling programs to describe the work of school counselors, Gysbers (2001) wrote about guidance and counseling and guidance and counseling programs. In our opinion, the continued failure to come to consensus on language is inexplicable and only serves to continue the confusion about who school counselors are and what they do.